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Thursday, March 14, 2013

57. I counted. 57. There were
57 drivers who took time out this past week to wait at some border
"machsom" in Northern Israel and drive Palestinian children with
their parents to hospital appointments in Israel, and back to the "machsom"
till the next time. All volunteers, last week, next week, and so forth.

As so many of my previous
letters obviously attest, the issues of minority oppression in Israel and the
forging of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians in the conquered territories are
the most critical for the survival of liberal Zionism and the future of our
small country.

I've always found my ability
to have an impact on those issues fairly limited….limited first and foremost by
my own endowed abilities, but also by other important responsibilities such as
work, family, community, as well as, perhaps, a certain laziness at latching
onto activist opportunities with others.

Nevertheless, I've attempted
to set aside a day a week to join with others in an attempt to breech the walls
that hamper progress towards those two issues. For a number of years I joined
other dedicated Israelis in chaperoning West Bank Palestinian farmers to their
fields and groves as protection against the harassment and violence of our Jewish
settlers. As this became physically more difficult for me, I found and joined a
group of other Israelis dedicated to driving ailing Palestinian children and
their parents from the West Bank to hospitals in Israel. I've
"toured" the Palestinian West Bank from the cave dwellers of the
southern Hevron thru the villages of East Jerusalem and Northward to the
villages near Shchem and into the city of Jenin. In Belien I was enveloped by
the horrible smoke of tear-gas grenades. In Sheich-Jerach I sat with families
evicted from their homes. I've spent some days in the Beduin areas east of Beer
Sheva, and was enveloped in more gas grenades while demonstrating in
Um-el-Fachem against the physical provocations of extreme right-wing Jewish
Israelis. And, of course, I've written a good number of long letters to a long mailing
list with the hope that a few hundred, or at least a few tens will actually
read and be influenced.

In all of this I've always
been a foot-soldier, or perhaps more correctly…a soldier of fortune, never
joining any particular political group, never following a particular leader,
but also never taking the initiative to lead others, almost always being a
loner or piggy-backing on what others have organized. This, of course, because
of my endowed nature and those limitations I mentioned above.

During one of my rides from
the Jelamy barrier (near Jenin) to Rambam hospital in Haifa, the father of a
child with some breathing disorder (something I'm personally familiar with)
asked me if I'm paid to do this mission. I answered that all of us drivers are
volunteers. He looked bewildered and puzzled, as I was probably bewildered by
his not knowing. He asked "Why?". I remember answering something
about the need to help people and also the need to show a bond of friendship
between Israeli and Palestinian. Yet his question stuck in my mind as some
questions often do, and I know that there are a few more answers I give to
myself, and the answers are so much more complicated.

Perhaps, in the final
analysis, I've been doing my small part in an attempt at a more organized and
orderly retreat within a battle that can't be won. Perhaps I'm simply one more loser
within a liberal Zionist minority
squirming to clutch at straws while the heavy machinery of a
fundamentalist-nationalistic future drives on with assurance. Perhaps I'm an
extreme pessimist vowing to go down fighting. Then again, I think with a sigh of relief, perhaps I'm really just an
extreme optimist waiting for the "big change".

That "big change"
certainly did not come with these last elections. About 25% of non-Arab party
seats in our newly elected Knesset have placed the Palestinian issue as a major
item in their agenda. More than 55% have placed the yearning for a Greater
Israel at the core of their agenda whether through nationalistic,
fundamentalistic, or messianic reasons. The rest of our Knesset's non-Arab
seats (Lapid's Yesh-Atid) have taken up other issues as their core agenda while
lining up politically (with Bennet and Habayit Hayehudi) to assure that Greater
Israel has an even greater voice and influence in our new government. Greater
Israel voices will therefore make up about two thirds of our new government
coalition. The coalition also includes a less than 9% fig leaf strongly supporting a
Two-State policy. The current fig leaf, Tzipi Livni's Hatnua, will be even less
effective than Labor's dismal effectiveness in the previous government. Our new
government will not promote a Peace Process based on compromise and Two States
for Two Peoples. It will talk "peace-process" while promoting the
continued and gradual evolvement of a Greater Israel with a Palestinian
population oppressed by lack of citizenship and equal rights, while harassed by
security precautions to nip rebellion in the bud. The Greater Israel part of our
new coalition has also purified itself of its more democratic voices
(Meridor, Begin, Eitan, Rivlin). We Leftist-Liberal cry-babies are "in for
it".

The Palestinian from Jenin,
while sitting next to me on the way to Rambam hospital, asked me
"why?", why do I do this?. I answered what I answered, but I think I know
the real reason:

There is the probability that
some years from now my grandchildren will be pondering the question of whether
to leave my country. My country may, by then, have formally become that Greater
Israel I fear……the jingoist-fundamentalist-messianic land of apartheid, upheld
by its Spartan militarism. In the hope that my grandchildren will be part of
the small minority Liberal-Zionist opposition to that reality, I expect they
will ask piercing questions of their ancestors, such as: "Where were you
when there was still a chance to do otherwise?"………and I will be able to
answer them: "I did not turn away. I did not do nothing. I did something.
Not enough. I know. I'm sorry. But I did some things. And, also, last week (so
many years ago) I was one of those 57 drivers from Jenin to Rambam
hospital."

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Imagine the Tea Party taking complete control of the
Republican Party, and winning the elections in the U.S., including both
congressional houses………. And actually beginning to pursue policies they hold
dear to their beliefs. Imagine ………

Well, two years later, if you don't like it……. You could
probably change it.

Here in Israel, after these coming elections (Jan. 22) the
outlook portends that our own Tea
Parties, regardless of the bickering among themselves, will hold an extreme
right-wing mandate for at least the coming four years…… enough time to cause
many irreversible changes and damages to
the fragile formula of a liberal,
democratic, Jewish and Zionist State.

I have been worried for a long time. Today I am past
worrying. I am trying to build for myself a Plan-B as to how I and others could still stay actively afloat as an opposition with hope within the kind of Government and country which are becoming more and
more of a reality.

O.K. ……………..and now for this letter.

A couple of weeks ago I got into an exchange of opinions
with a friend who is certainly far from a Bibi or Likud fan. Nevertheless we
evidently have a difference of opinion about the road onto which Bibi is consciously
taking us. I thought the exchange (probably too long for most readers) may
interest a few of you, so here it is:

Exchange of letters

21.12.2012

From a friend to his mailing list (actually a second
mailing on the subject to that mailing list):

I was pleased to see some discussion of my analysis about
the war [8 days of Gaza the previous month. A.S.] and its consequences.
I will partially disagree with some of the comments and will express
those disagreements but I want to emphasize that for the most part I am in
agreement in general with those comments.

First, as an Israeli I am also quite pleased that Obama was
re-elected. Romney's father, George, was a good governor of Michigan when I was
in graduate school there, and according to what I have read, Mitt was a fairly
good governor of Massachusetts. But as a national leader he would have had to
placate the right wing of the Republican party and I doubt that it would have
been good for the USA or Israel.

It seems to me that Obama has come a long way in his
understanding of the Middle East since his first year or two in office, as he
watched his original Middle East policies crash and burn and I think that this
will benefit both the USA and Israel.

As for Israel, the latest public opinion poll conducted here
shows that most Israelis are in favor of a two-state solution. Polls
carried out among the Palestinian population are not nearly so clear on that
issue, with a majority of the Palestinians being in favor of negotiations and
being in favor of armed resistance. I think that these polls may or may not be
accurate but I think that the leaders of each side see their publics more or
less in the same way; that is, as reflected in the polls. One consequence is
that Bibi has tried to move his Likud party to the center and along the way
publicly proclaiming his favoring the two-state solution including a
Palestinian Arab state. Unfortunately in the last set of primaries, the Likud
Knesset list has taken a couple of steps back towards the right. Bibi now faces
the same kind of political dilemma that Romney faced when confronted by a large
tea-party faction. He couldn't win without them but not disassociating himself
from them cost him votes among moderates. Bibi has Feiglin and his friends
while losing some of the moderate Likudniks from the party list. I suspect that
Bibi's combining of party lists with Lieberman's party was an attempt to
jettison some of the more extremist elements in the Likud. It's not the first
time in Likud history that this sort of thing has happened. Menahem Begin
insisted the Liberal Party make up about one-third of his list, even though
that party attracted very few voters. What was important to Begin was who that
combination kept off the list as opposed to who was on it.

After the vote in the UN on Palestinian representation, Bibi
announced more settlements in the West Bank. Actually he didn't but appearances
rather than substance are what count around here. I think that by and
large this was a sop to his own right wing to keep them quiet about having
their representation in the Likud list reduced by combining with Lieberman's
list. The elections are one month away and as long as he can maintain shalom
bayit within his party he has the election in the bag. The Israeli left
and center are fragmented and it remains to be seen as to whether or not they
will keep their collective egos in check and concentrate their campaigns on criticizing
Bibi and the right; or will spend their time in internecine political warfare
among themselves. Shelly Yacimovitz's Labor party caught a break in this
regard when Amir Peretz left the party and joined Tzipi Livni's party thus
helping greatly to bring some shalom bayit to the Labor party. (By the way, I
will most likely be voting for the Labor party this time around.)

Shelly has been running the kind of campaign (based mainly
on social issues) that the Labor party has failed to run in decades and has lost
election after election because of it. I think that Bibi's announcement about
settlements was also bait for the Labor party to make the election about peace
with the Palestinians. Shelly, showing (IMHO) great political sense, did not
rise to the bait. Much to my surprise she has turned out to be one smart
lady.

As to the world's reaction to Bibi's settlement
announcement; it reminds me a little about something said about the UN back in
the 70's and 80's. If the Arab states proposed a resolution to the General
Assembly that the Earth was flat, it would probably be adopted by a vote of 92
to 4 with 38 abstentions. Malke mentioned something about the moral high
ground. It seems to me that if such a thing exists, it plays no part in world
politics. You may remember that back when Rabin was prime minister and the
government was left of center the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution
stating that Zionism is racism. That resolution was rescinded by the UN General
Assembly when Yitzkah Shamir was prime minister in a right-wing likud led
government. If you think that Israel had achieved a moral high ground under
Shamir's administration and the UN acted accordingly … well, let's just say
that I disagree.

By the way, Abbas faces the same sort of problem that Bibi
faces only in a more severe form. Not only does he have to compete with the
Hamas but the Fatah elements in the PA are pressuring him to go for Palestinian
victory instead of a compromise peace agreement. Helen (and most of the Israeli
citizenry) is correct that a one-state solution would be a disastrous end to
the State of Israel. That is why Abbas has set conditions for resuming
negotiations such that agreeing to the conditions would be equivalent to
agreeing to a one-state solution. Right now neither Bibi nor Abbas want
negotiations. Bibi will be in a better position to engage in negotiations after
the elections. Abbas is in a pre-election situation but with no new elections
in sight. He may be in this situation forever or until time and biology run
their course. At any rate there is nothing short of committing ourselves to
national suicide that will bring Abbas to the negotiating table. Certainly
there will be no pressure put on the Palestinians to negotiate. Indeed the idea
of putting any pressure on the Palestinians is completely absent from
discussions about the Middle East, I suspect even in sincerely pro-peace
organizations like J-Street.

Anyway, it's about 6:30 AM on Friday morning here and I have
rambled on for long enough. Soon my better half will be up and we will start
cleaning the house for Shabbat. Have a nice weekend and please feel free to
respond, even if it's to tell me that I don't know what I am talking about.

Have a nice weekend,

=========================================================

22.12.2012

From Aaron Sharif to a few recepients of the ubove
letter

Being Iris (my wife) gets all the list's messages and I end up reading
some of them, I ran into the sender's latest assessment of what's
happening politically here in our country. I have a few serious
disagreements about some of what he writes and I thought I should tell you
about them. ……………………….

First and foremost: The sender seems to paint Bibi as the prudent good
guy whose every action is mostly done to keep the bad guys down…….

Accordingly, Bibi is ideologically/politically in the Center between
Left and Right, he really wants a two-state compromise, is doing his very best
to bring the Likud party into the Center, and it's only the other guys, the bad
guys in his own party, and those utterly non-compromising Palestinians, who are
thwarting his every desire for a two-state solution.

To me this is a perversion of what is actually happening. The great
majority of the Likud party is against a two-state compromise. This was true
before Feiglin and his crowd, and remains truer than ever today. Most of those
who changed their positions and saw that there are no other viable alternatives,
had to leave the Likud Party. Arik Sharon, Olmert, Tzipy Livneh, split off from
the Likud for that very reason. The remaining few (very few), those who stayed
on as relics of nostalgia, have now been kicked into the far back benches of
the Likud, with zero influence over political events. Bibi stayed on, and on
top, because he supports those who are against a two-state policy, and they
know this. His only real difference with Feiglin is the kind of one-state
target they are shooting for. Feiglin's would be totally theocratic. Bibi's
would be a bit more democratic and secular. Both would rule over apartheid
enclaves of Palestinians. Feiglin declares things openly. Bibi is a more
perspective and shrewd politician, has a smoother tongue, and knows that what
counts is what is actually done on ground zero rather than what is said.

On Ground Zero, meaning the West Bank, Bibi has supported, done, and
implemented policies which have made a two-state resolve slip further and
further away from reality. During his few years as finance minister and his
many years as Prime Minister, settlements in the West Bank, both pseudo-legal
and illegal, received constantly growing portions of our national budget. Area
C, comprising 60 percent of the West Bank has been nearly cleansed of Arabs in
a strategic process of making it a de-facto part of Israel proper. In doing so,
we have knowingly split the rest of the West bank into a potpourri of smaller
uncombined enclaves. The resolve to build settlements in area E1 is simply part
of this ongoing policy. E1 is meant to drive a long arm eastward from Jerusalem
towards the Jordan River, making accessibility so much more difficult between
the southern and northern West Bank. We will do all that we can to see to it
that even an only semi-viable Palestinian State becomes impossible.

It is absurd to suppose, as the writer seems to do, that Bibi joined
with Lieberman in order to make the Party list less extremist in its jingoism.
Aside from hearing Lieberman himself, please listen to the others who stand
beside and behind Lieberman. Some of the most racist and prejudicial
statements against both Israeli Arabs and against the possibility of a
Palestinian State have come from this quarter of Bibi's alliance. (Though
Lieberman once wrote a scenario for a separate Palestinian Entity, he openly
based it on getting rid of most Israeli Arabs and having overwhelming control
over that separate entity.) At most, Bibi thought to minimize religious
fanaticism (Feiglinism) through this move. But mainly the alliance was done to
make sure he has first crack at forming a government after the elections,
rather than Shelly and her rejuvenated Labor Party if it succeeded in making an
alliance with a reborn Olmert (but he remained stranded) or a rekindled Tzipy Livne
(which Tzipy turned down). The next government will be a small but firm
majority coalition of Bibi's Likud+Lieberman parties together with Bennet's
Bayit Yehudi and the Shas Religious Parties. They will have the support of
other smaller extreme right-wing parties. If Labor or Atid join the coalition
it will be because Bibi is willing to show the world how moderate he is. They
will have as little effect on Israeli-Palestinian policies as they had in our
present government.

I agree with the writer's assessment of Abbas's situation, but fully
disagree with his blanket assertion that "there is nothing short
of committing ourselves to national suicide that will bring Abbas to the
negotiating table". That may be true as an end result to negotiation
demands, but not for the start of negotiations. Abbas has consistently said he
will sit for negotiations as long as construction by us Israelis in the
West Bank (including East Jerusalem) will be stopped during the negotiations.
We Israelis don't go for this and say that we already did so for a while, and
Abbas still refused to negotiate. We overlook the fact that during that time we
refused to include the construction in East Jerusalem, and continued in the
West Bank with many places which already waved a permit (I was there to see the
construction). Our Bibi refused then and refuses today to halt all
construction behind the green line (including East Jerusalem) during
negotiations. I fail to see how such a demand is "nothing short of
committing ourselves to national suicide" in order to bring Abbas to the
negotiating table. True, Abbas ( and also us) has other demands as well
(such as to receive an initial map of what we think will be left of the West
Bank to the Palestinians), but they don't impede the start of negotiations. We
aren't even willing to try him out and say "O.K., we'll stop construction
on the day negotiations begin, and continue construction the very day negations
fall apart". We don't want negotiations. So when our writer thinks "Bibi
will be in a better position to engage in negotiations after the
elections", I need to add that Bibi will go to negotiations only if
terribly pressured against his will, and will do his sincerest to see to it that
the negotiations lead nowhere. Of course this may also be the end-game
situation on the Palestinian side, but we will never really know while we have
a government that the great majority of its members (including the Prime
Minister) are against a two-state compromise.

Netanyahu has been the most influential force in the Likud Party for the
past two whole decades, the majority of these years with the Likud Party
heading our Government. Of the last 15 years Netanyahu was an important
minister in 4 of them, and a prime minister in 7 of them. He has definitely
mobilized the Likud Party to create indelible chapters in our history. Soon
those chapters may bring us to a point of no return.

So……I simply can't be as lenient with Bibi as Frankie's letter seems to
permit.

(As always…there is so much more to say about the above. I also have a
few more points of disagreement with the writer's assessments: e.g., reading of
opinion poll results, Obama and the Middle East. But I've chattered enough in
this letter. )

My very best to you,

aaron

23.12.2012

From the
"sender" directly to Aaron

Hi Aaron,

First, thank you for your
response. It helps my ego to know that someone takes my ramblings seriously
enough to disagree. ………. I will reply below where I think that you are wrong or
where I think you got me wrong. ………..

First, I don't hate Bibi or
any other Israeli politician. I get the feeling that some think that I am
supposed to hate him just as I was supposed to hate the Fascist expansionist
Menahem Begin, who negotiated Israel's first peace treaty with an Arab state
and withdrew from three-fourths of the land that Israel captured in 1967, or
hate the militarist war monger Ariel Sharon, of whom it was predicted that
within six months of his becoming prime minister Israel would be at war with
all of our Middle Eastern neighbors and who pulled us out of Gaza and split the
Likud party forming Israel's first major centrist party. So, no, I won't hate
Bibi but I won't describe him as a prudent good guy either. In his second term
he has proven to be a canny politician who is mainly concerned about winning
and keeping high political office. I don't know what goes on in his head
intellectually or ideologically but his behavior can be observed and it has
been to pull the Likud party to the political center because that's where the
votes are. He publicly announced his agreement with the two-state solution in a
speech at Bar Ilan University, in other words to people who make up his core
constituency. It was not only a statement of his position but the beginning of
his attempt to persuade his supporters that the two-state solution should be
supported by them. It was an example of political leadership that was part of
the process of bringing the Likud to the center.

Bibi stayed on top because he
still has the majority of his party supporting him. Feiglin and his buddies
would like to see Bibi removed from leadership and replaced with a more
likeminded leader. Bibi wil use every political maneuver that he can to get the
Feiglin crowd downgraded within the Likud because, whether or not he agrees
with them, they are a threat to his position and they are an electoral handicap
with the voting public.

If I agree with you on one
point, it is that way too much money has been spent on the settlements in the
West Bank and in Gaza before they were withdrawn. The E1 issue is a bit of a
fraud as far as Palestinian contiguity is concerned. The "long arm"
reaches out about two miles from Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumim. Beyond the
group of Israeli settlements at Maaleh Adumim there is about another 11 miles
of Palestinian territory until the banks of the Dead sea. I might point out
that from the Security barrier adjacent to Kalkilya to the Mediterranean, the
width of Israel is only about nine miles. Certainly if Israel is not
considered two enclaves then a solution to north south travel problems with the
Palestinians is available for implementation.

Now here is where I disagree
with you and most others, including the right wing nut cases who also see the
settlements as barriers to peace. The settlements are not what is preventing
negotiations. In fact, if one were to look at the Palestinian situation
logically, rather than emotionally or by adopting propaganda narratives, one
would see that the settlements are motivations to negotiate. Before you go
ballistic I would suggest you consider that if Arafat had accepted the Clinton
parameters at Camp David there would be at least 200,000 less settlers in the
West Bank today. The same goes for Abbas in the past four years (and even more
so in the next four). The logical way for the Palestinians to stop settlement
expansion is to demand unconditional negotiations and reach a compromise peace
agreement with Israel as quickly as possible. There are several reasons
why the Palestinians have not followed this policy and settlement expansion is
not one of them. And by the way, just as a reminder, I think that settlement
expansion is a very bad idea for all of us Jews.

No one listens to Lieberman
but just assume that he is Stalin reincarnated (unless they are Stalinists). An
example of that is in the above paragraph where it talks about Lieberman's
plans to get rid of most Israeli Arabs. I suppose this brings to mind visions
of Israeli Arabs being driven out of their homes and into the desert or some
such. This wasn't what Lieberman advocated though many people, perhaps
including Aaron, are left with the impression that he did. By the way
that Lieberman advocates any sort of two-state solution puts him to the left of
the Labor party of the 1970's and 80's. Mention of the Shas party is also
interesting. I know that we are supposed to hate Shas and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.
However, when Begin negotiated the withdrawal from Sinai, Rabbi Shlomo Goren
(you remember him, the liberal rabbi who jumped out of airplanes with the
Tzanchanim) issued a Halachic ruling that forbid giving back conquered
territory. It was Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who issued the Halachic ruling that
basically left that question up to the political rulers of the state, thus
giving religious legitimacy to Begin's peace policies. So, no, I won't hate
Shas or Rabbi Yosef. I won't agree with them on a lot of things either.
However, they have a constituency which demands social justice and the
potential for a partnership with the Labor party is therefore not out of the
question.

Abbas has set three
preconditions to start negotiations. Israel must agree to
pull back to the 1967 lines. Israel must freeze all construction. Israel must
agree to accept all of the Palestinian refugees back within the green lines.
The only alteration of these demands is the settlement construction freeze
which was added to the other two when Bibi was elected. Abbas has been fairly
consistent about these demands because his constituency has been educated to
expect their fulfillment. Not long ago Abbas went on Israeli TV and indicated
that the Palestinians no longer demanded right of return for the
"refugees". He immediately back-tracked on that statement when
he had to face his own constituents. Here is a newspaper account from Ha'aretz:

I will reiterate that two of
these three conditions are invitations to national suicide. The settlement
freeze is thrown in because of the political difficulties it would cause Bibi.

Well, let's see. Natanyu in
his first term decimated the Likud which more or less dumped him, leaving
Sharon to clean up the mess. Bibi came back after Sharon split the party and
proceeded to move the Likud to the Israeli center picking up bits and pieces of
the party that had followed Sharon to the center and putting Humpty Dumpty back
together again. In the meantime the center and the left fragmented over mostly
personality issues. Where all this will lead to, I don't know. We have a month
before Bibi will probably be re-elected but in Israeli politics a month is a
long time. Moreover, Israeli politics are often effected by events and
decisions which take place elsewhere, beyond the control of our politicians,
but that effect us profoundly.

Nu? Now it's your turn.

24.12.2012

From Aaron to the "sender"

NO, we've done this before. I don't intend getting into a long back and
forth debate with you regarding the direction taken by our government and the
reasons and ramifications of such. I trust that your own heart and desires for
our future belong in the right place, and I'd rather argue at length with those
who think quite the opposite but are still willing to listen.

Nevertheless, I can't but include a few comments on your response to my
response:

No, it’s not about "hating" Bibi. It’s about knowing where
he's taking us. Learning from past History needs to be done judiciously. Please
don't place Bibi neither as a Begin nor as a Ben-Guryon. Nor is he an Arik
Sharon or Olmert who came to the realization that in order to change course
they needed to leave the Likud. Bibi isn't leaving. He isn't going to change
course. He is deepening his reliance on a Party and its leadership who state
openly their objection to a 2-state compromise. Our next President will most
likely be from the Likud and states openly that he is for a Greater Israel
scenario….. and he's one of the few "good guys" left in the Likud
leadership. Bibi got forced into his announcement at Bar-Ilan, but is doing a
wonderful job at scuttling the 2-state direction, at giving Abbas lots of
inducements to refuse negotiations, and at bringing us closer to the One State
status which will mortally endanger our Zionism, or our Democracy, or probably
both.

As for Bibi's reaction to the Feiglin crowd, don't mistake internal
political tactics for long range strategic motives, directions and ideologies.
Just as there are internal tensions for getting out the votes between the Likud
and the Bayit Hayehudi Parties, so are there internal tactics within the Likud
itself regarding leadership and its color. But all this is happening within a
consensus of objection to any kind of Palestinian State. Bibi has always been,
and remains, in that consensus.

As for E1, strategically it has lots to do with breaking up the West
bank into North and South. The settlement (and de-facto annexation) enterprise
has learned and operated much on the premise of Dunam after Dunam, upgrading it
to square mile after mile. E1 is the second leap forward on that principal,
between Jerusalem and the Jordan. (The first leap was enlarging and building up
our Jewish population in East Jerusalem way beyond the original 1967 borders of
East Jerusalem). Don't worry, there is a third leap already sitting on the
desk, probably heading west from the Jordan valley which we fully control
within Area-C. Likewise, your argument of "fraud", using our 9-mile
waistline as an example is a bit weak. Aside from what I wrote above about
"leap" stages, check out the difference in geographical terrain.

You are mostly mistaken about Abbas's prior conditions for opening
negotiations. Two of your three conditions are statements of unequivocal
demands during negotiations; just as we have our own unequivocal demands which
we say are non-negotiable (e.g. recognizing us specifically as a
"Jewish" state). Perhaps all of these mutual “unequivocals” will
destroy the negotiations. Perhaps not. But for initially opening talks only one
thing is needed from us: a total freeze of construction during the talks,
including East Jerusalem. We refuse to do that even as a ploy to "call his
bluff" and gain points in the international political game.

You are certainly right about politics being able to take a variety of
turns (such as Shas going with Labor, as you wrote). This is our reason for
saying that there is hope for change regardless of how dismal things may look
like today. This is a good reason for continuing to put up a struggle for
change. But as a rule, the struggle is not with you or about your political
positions, which are probably somewhere in the same neighborhood as mine. My
problem was mainly with your assessments. Therefore, it is moot to continue
arguing with you when we should both be out there arguing and convincing the general
Israeli public.

I know…. I know….. I know….. you feel the urge to respond (I know the
feeling), and perhaps you will. Nevertheless, you are not my target, and though
there is so much more to say, I'll do and discontinue with the above……
and that's it.